New Collector Here.

Welcome to the CCF, Stlspidey.

Over the years, Buffalo nickels were my favorite sets to assemble. I enjoyed piecing together condition-matched sets.

It was always my philosophy to buy the coin, not the slab or the dealer. I've long preferred shows overall as a buying venue. One can then find and network with preferred dealers who have a sense of what you seek. I especially sought out dealers who set items aside in anticipation of my attendance at a show.

I for one, have had pretty good luck buying off ebay, if you don't count the seller that claimed the 99 silver proof dime I won for $2 got stolen.

You have to be on your toes there but most of what I buy is fairly inexpensive. I recently won a 22 Peace dollar that looked terrible in the pic. It looked so bad nobody bid on it and I won it for about $24. Once I got possession it turned out to be a very nice coin, an AU+ except for a ding in the rim.

I've also gotten some good deals on modern silver proofs, slabbed and unslabbed. Got many a PCGS PF69 dime for less than $10 and 5 raw silver proof State Quarters for $5.96 each.

But then I'm only buying modern silver mostly unless an obvious deal shows up, like the 22 Peace dollar. If you're collecting older circulated coins I can see where you really need to pay attention as grading them is subjectable and poor photography on some of these doesn't help either. There you're probably better off buying in person but most ebay sellers I've dealt with will be happy to refund your money if you're not happy, you're just out the return postage and on coins that's not really that bad.

I've only been to one coin show so far and wasn't impressed with the prices. Most of what I collect can be found online for less with shipping cost included. The next show I may try to do some haggling but I detest doing that.

I would certainly rather do business locally but if the prices are too high I'll go elsewhere.

Rick

I mainly buy on ebay. Mainly because there is only two local coins shops in town. One guy is a crook and the other one has really high prices. I also check in the pawn shops around town. I've found some nice stuff in there that's been overlooked by the folks running the shop and have gotten great deals. If you're careful about what you're doing, you can find pretty good deals on ebay as well as pawn shops.

I put my mid-grade (VG-XF)Buffalo Nickel set together by purchasing them on ebay. This set cost me about $300, and I value it at $1200 - $2000. (I recently turned down an offer of $1000. I started off with a mostly acid complete set and worked my way up to this set (no acid)This is now a concrete part of my personal collection. Raw Buff's, on ebay, are usually half the price asked for at shows and stores.